


Sin

by rapacityinblue



Series: Way Back Home [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Canon - Movie, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapacityinblue/pseuds/rapacityinblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward has watched his brother die so many times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sin

**Gluttony**  
Ed has asked him to stay away, but he can't. It's the blonde hair and familiar face – he first saw her in an alley, just a flash before Edward jerked him along. _I told you, that happens sometimes, it's best not to talk to them._

She looks so sad, and she used to be so proud. Now she stands in an alley, shivering with cold and fever, soliciting men between the spasms. So Al goes again and again to visit her, bringing food or coffee, sometimes a blanket, though he knows she won't wear it. She smiles at him, and thanks him, and sometimes he sits at her feet and listens to her stories about England and Paris – places he doesn't know, has never even heard of until Ed explains.

“You're getting in her way,” his brother says. “She needs to eat, somehow, too, and you're doing her no favors, distracting her.”

She always asks him, “Are you eating? Do you have a winter coat?” As if he were the one who needed protection, hugging himself on a cold street corner.

Al knows it's true, no matter how sad, but he keeps going back, wanting just one more taste of the world they left behind.

 **Envy**  
Edward hasn't spoken of it since the funeral, but Al knows the thought still plagues him. _Al, let's bring mom back._

Sometimes, they walk down the street and see. The people of Rizenbule are no longer careful around them, don't limit their actions and dance around the raw wounds. They see crying babies, their mothers rocking them, and children no older than them proudly presenting drawings, clay sculptures, _look, mother, see what I made? Aren't I a good boy? Aren't I?_

In one of Father's old books, Al finds the array. It's beautiful, the lines sinuous and lithe, but it makes him sick to look at. Hastily, he closes the bag and shoves it back on the shelf – outside, it has begun raining, and Al hears the bell ringing, calling the men to form a sandbag line. From the window, Al sees families huddled in their doorways. Mothers and children who watch as their sons and fathers and brothers disappear under the downpour.

 **Wrath**  
Edward is always at his back, pushing, nagging. You need to eat, brother. You're too thin, brother. And gradually he begins growing angry, why won't you eat? but he never shows it in front of Al. He fetches blankets when Al becomes feverish and tucks them around him.

When the coughing begins, why won't you eat? becomes, how can you do this to me?

Alphonse tells him he's lucky that he'll get to see Amestris again, but Ed pretends not to hear him.

 **Lust**  
Al is always in a rush, always hurrying, and Edward tells him to slow down, but he can't.

Long days in the factory, the makeshift lab, with chemicals and flame, trying to find out: which burns the slowest? Hottest? Endless sketches, graphs, charts, blueprints: which is the most aerodynamic? Least drag? Is that alloy heat resistant? But what about insulation?

“If I can prove to them Germany is great again,” Al explains, voice torn from the ragged coughs. Ed rubs his back slowly, up and down his back so it soothes. “If I can prove it, Edward – I know I can!”

 **Sloth**  
The first time Ed wakes up in the middle of the night is to the sounds of cranking gears and straining rope, and for the longest time he doesn't know what that sound is. The nurses think he's crazy for staying, overnight even, tell him he'll grow sick, but Ed knows he won't. God hates him, he tells them, too much to grant that release.

It is astounding the constant coughing doesn't keep Al awake until the six o'clock bell – the bed just one over, an old woman who clawed at her sheets and gasped, eyes rolling, before her lungs spasmed to expel air that wasn't there and she passed out, went into seizures. After, the nurses had taken her away and they haven't seen her since. One of the nurses tells him that they'd tried to reinflate her lungs but there had been nothing left, all disintegrated under the pressure. She'd already been missing five ribs, the nurse confides, theoracoplasty.

They tell him Al will be fine. 90% good attitude, they say, and Al is always right there with a smile and a joke. Many days, Ed finds him out of bed and in the nursery during rest periods, playing cards or jacks or house and dolls with the children there.

Other times they sit on the porch in the sun or snow letting Al have the fresh air. It's the interminable waiting that makes Ed weak, the itch in his legs to run, jump and _take his brother with him,_ but he stays day after day. Sits awake and watches every labored breath his brother takes, but still, the nights are better than the days.

That sound is the body chute, one nurse tells him, when he finally asks. Because they don't like to carry the bodies out past the patients. Bad for moral. 90% attitude, after all.

 **Greed**  
Alchemy revolves around death. After years, both Edward and Alphonse have realized the truth of this. The stone requires a sacrifice. To open the gate requires a sacrifice.

There is no equivalent trade, only luck – that they have never been the ones to make those sacrifices. That others have stepped forward for them, or tried to protect them from what would happen. Edward would say that is equivalent trade: so many have benefited from their work that it is fair they should benefit from others'.

He feels no guilt over using the stone that Scar created, and Al wishes he could feel the same – thousands of lives gone in an instant to save him. Edward told him, no, you never asked for this, Alphonse, this isn't your fault. But still, Al remembered watching that stone dig through the dirt, the growing feeling of horror as he recognized the symbol being etched. The feel of hands against his plate-chest...

He lies there, in the dirt, Scar's tattoos imprinted on his armor and wonders what it will feel like to die.

After, he can't remember any of it.

 **Pride**  
Robert Koch. Clemens von Pirquet. Albert Calmette, Camille Geurin, these are names Edward hates.

The papers describe it as “national arrogance” that has prevented the distribution of the vaccine and now one out of every six deaths is the same. Seven to ten people a day in this place alone and they can treat it, but they do not. Edward knows this is a sin, and he identifies it as “Pride”.

Al is so pale that Ed swears he can see bones, his capillaries in his eyes have burst and dotted them with a vicious red. In his face, Ed sees the faces of others, and he wonders if _this_ is the penalty for his sin.


End file.
